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Tsenacomoco (Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom)

Tsenacomoco, otherwise known
as the Powhatan paramount chiefdom, was a political alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia
Indians that occupied the area first settled by the English at Jamestown. The origins of
Tsenacomoco date to the Late
Woodland Period (AD 900–1650). By 1607, twenty-eight to thirty-two groups,
each with its own chief, paid tribute to Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco. With boundaries that
stretched from the James River to
the Potomac and west to the fall line, Tsenacomoco had a
population of around 15,000 people. The name of the paramount chiefdom was first
reported by the early English settler William Strachey and, while some scholars
disagree, it may be translated to mean "densely inhabited place." Living in riverside
towns, the Indians of
Tsenacomoco cleared land for farming and used the forests for hunting. The wide, slow-moving rivers,
meanwhile, provided means for travel, trade, and war. After the English
arrived in 1607, Powhatan attempted to subsume them into Tsenacomoco, and, when that
failed, he fought them in the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614), which ended only with the marriage of
his daughter Pocahontas to John Rolfe. A successor to Powhatan,
Opechancanough, fought two
more wars, both of them unsuccessful. With Opechancanough's death in 1646 came the
end of Tsenacomoco. MORE...

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Origins

A subject long discussed by archaeologists, anthropologists, and ethnohistorians,
the origins of Tsenacomoco are unclear. Most recently, the historian James D. Rice
has argued that before about 1300, when Virginia Indians were largely hunters and
gatherers, their political organization was more egalitarian, with no strong
central authority. By the time the English arrived in 1607, however, the
Algonquian-speaking Indians of Tidewater Virginia had organized into chiefdoms of one or more towns and
a paramount chiefdom ruled by a strong, but not absolute, central authority. Five
important forces led to this transition: 1) accelerating population growth, 2)
increasing dependence on agriculture, 3) the centuries-long cooling period known
as the Little Ice Age, 4)
competition for prime town locations, and 5) an increase in warfare and
long-distance trade.

These factors were interdependent. A
reliance on agriculture led to an increase in population and the need for better
farmland. The Little Ice Age, meanwhile, shortened growing seasons, especially in
the north, making good land more difficult to obtain. This led to instability,
especially among the Iroquoian-speaking Indians in present-day New York. The
Susquehannocks lost that competition for land and were pushed south, raiding the
upper Potomac River and the Shenandoah Valley. The Indians in Tidewater Virginia largely escaped the
conflict, in part by banding together into chiefdoms and, eventually, paramount
chiefdoms. Internal factors, in addition to or instead of outside incursions, may
also have played a role. In the mid- to late 1500s, Powhatan inherited control
over the core six tribes of Tsenacomoco: the Powhatans, the Youghtanunds, the Mattaponis, the Pamunkeys, the Arrohatecks, and the Appamattucks. (The Indians of Tsenacomoco
are sometimes called, simply, the Powhatans, after the paramount chief and the
tribe or group from which he hailed.)

Over the next few decades, Powhatan expanded Tsenacomoco by a combination of
diplomacy and force. While appointing allies and kinsmen as district and tribal
chiefs, Powhatan ruled as the mamanatowick, or paramount
chief, of Tsenacomoco. By 1607, roughly twenty-eight to thirty-two lesser
chiefdoms and tribes paid tribute to Powhatan. Along the James River these
included the Chesapeakes, Nansemonds, Kecoughtans, Warraskoyacks, Quiyoughcohannocks, Paspaheghs, Weyanocks, Appamattucks,
Arrohatecks, and Powhatans. Up the Pamunkey (York) River were the Chiskiacks, Werowocomocos, Pamunkeys, Mattaponis, and
Youghtanunds. The Piankatank
Indians lived on the river of the same name. The Opiscopanks, Lower Cuttatawomens, Moraughtacunds, Rappahannocks, Pissasecks, Nandtaughtacunds, and
Upper
Cuttatawomens all lived on the Rappahannock River. The Wiccocomicos, Sekakawons, Onawmanients, and Patawomecks occupied the
Potomac River, and the Accomacs and Occohannocks lived on the Eastern Shore, across the Chesapeake Bay. The
Chickahominies, who
lived in the heart of Tsenacomoco, on the Chickahominy River, were independent of
Powhatan's rule.

Boundaries, Language, Population, Name

With a more settled, agricultural
lifestyle and a central political authority came more distinct geographical
boundaries. Tsenacomoco stretched from the south bank of the James River—called
the Powhatan River by the Indians—north to the south bank of the Potomac River. On
the west, Tsenacomoco was bounded by the fall line, and on the east by the
Chesapeake Bay. The Indians on the Eastern Shore were not always reliably under
Powhatan's control. Neither, for that matter, were the Patawomecks in the north.
Tsenacomoco's boundaries, in other words, were not fixed but tended to reflect the
reach of the paramount chief's power and influence at any given moment. Still, as
the historian April Hatfield has pointed out, Tsenacomoco's boundaries remained
generally consistent and were largely co-opted by the English, serving as the
early and unofficial borders of the new Virginia colony.

The inhabitants of Tsenacomoco spoke Algonquian and lived in the southernmost
range of Algonquian speakers who lived along the east coast of North America, from
Labrador, Canada, to North Carolina. Siouan-speakers lived to the west of
Tsenacomoco, above the fall line in the Piedmont. They included the Monacans, who lived on the upper James River,
and the Mannahoacs, who
occupied the upper reaches of the Rappahannock River. The Iroquoian-speaking Massawomecks and Susquehannocks lived
farther to the north and west, in the area of present-day western Maryland and
southern Pennsylvania. All of these tribes periodically raided and clashed with
their neighbors in Tsenacomoco (and vice versa).

Scholars disagree about the population of Tsenacomoco. In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784), Thomas
Jefferson estimated "about 8000 inhabitants, which was one for every
square mile." More recently, the anthropologist Helen C. Rountree has suggested a
population of about 15,000 living in an area of approximately 6,000 square miles.
Other estimates range from as low as 13,000 to as high as just over 22,000, with
the historian Rice setting the Indian population of the entire Chesapeake region
in 1607 at more than 30,000.

The name of Powhatan's paramount chiefdom
was reported by the early Jamestown settler William Strachey, who wrote in his Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia that Powhatan's
people called their land "Tsenacommacah." The anthropologist Frederic W. Gleach
has translated this to mean "densely inhabited place," citing earlier work by the
scholars David Beers Quinn and James Geary that suggests that the word's base
means "land dwelt upon," "dwelling house," or "house site," while its prefix, tsen-, means "close together." Geary himself has written
that Tsenacomoco means "a nearby dwelling-place," while the anthropologist
Rountree has suggested "our place."

The idea that Tsenacomoco means "densely inhabited place" complements the
suggestion, made by the historical geographer Michael Williams, that when
Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492, "the population density of the
forest [in what is now the eastern United States] was probably even greater than
that of densely settled parts of western Europe." Still, Tsenacomoco was much less
densely populated than England, at least in 1600. (England's population more than
doubled between 1520 and 1630.) While Tsenacomoco's population density may have
been about 2.5 people per square mile, rural England in 1600 averaged a density of
between 50 and 100 people per square mile.

Land and People

The waterways of the
Chesapeake Bay and the tidal rivers in Tsenacomoco were critical for
communication, transportation, and the many natural resources associated with
them. While Tsenacomoco's canoes may have been cumbersome compared to the light
and fast birch-bark canoes that the Massawomecks and Susquehannocks used in their
raids (paper birch did not grow in Tidewater Virginia), they were more than
adequate for transporting men, fish, and trade goods. In this way, the rivers,
rather than acting as natural boundaries, were connectors of towns and chiefdoms
and facilitators of trade, news, and war. By contrast, the fall line did serve as a natural
boundary because it prohibited water travel, while Tsenacomoco's northern border,
on the Potomac River, acted as a different kind of boundary. It suggested the
limit of Powhatan's control rather than any obstacle to easy travel.

In addition to wide, deep rivers, the landscape of Tsenacomoco featured forests of
walnut and oak. The Indians had no domesticated animals other than dogs, so
they used fire to harvest wood and
clear space for towns and garden plots. According to the Dutchman David Peterson
DeVries, who visited Virginia in March 1633, smoke from such fires was one of the
land's distinctive features. "When the wind blows out of the northwest, and the
smoke too is driven to sea," he wrote, "it happens that the land is smelt before
it is seen."

Like other Algonquian speakers along the
East Coast, the people of Tsenacomoco took their living from the rivers and
forests. Women gathered wild plants and firewood, tended the fields or gardens of
corn and beans, and did the cooking. Hunting and fishing were men's
work. The English described the men, who ran and walked extensively through the
woods in pursuit of enemies or game, as tall and lean with handsome physiques.
Whether inside or outside of Tsenacomoco's boundaries, tribes hunted within
prescribed limits. Stalking game in another tribe's territory sometimes elicited
retaliation. These and other invisible demarcations sometimes confused the
English. The Indians of Tsenacomoco did not fence in their fields, and they cleared more
land of trees than they actually farmed. The remaining land became home to various
wild grains, edible greens, and medicinal plants—all important to the Indians. The
English, however, considered such land "unimproved" and, therefore, subject to
seizure.

The Indians of Tsenacomoco resided in large and small towns, in even smaller
hamlets, and in temporary hunting camps. In reality, no living spot was permanent.
When their fields became exhausted, the people abandoned a town site and
constructed another at a different location. (War also provoked such moves, and,
in a few instances, Powhatan even forced the relocation of some tribal groups.)
Typical buildings were made of slender wooden poles stuck in the ground and then
bent at the top to form a roof. Transportable woven mats covered the roofs and
walls against the weather, and were laid on the bare earth to serve as floors. A
fire burned in the middle of the room, rendering the houses warm but smoky. A
large town might resemble John
White's painting of Secotan (located in present-day North Carolina) and
include garden plots, dwellings, storehouses, and ceremonial and religious
structures.

Towns were located near garden plots and
on high ground close to watercourses. Some towns were enclosed within light
palisades for protection against enemies; Powhatan's hometown, located on
Tsenacomoco's frontier, was an example, as was Pomeiooc, also painted by White.
Most towns, however, sprawled over the landscape amongst woods and open space and
could not even be seen all at once. This made it difficult for a stranger to
estimate the town's size and thereby how many fighting men it might have.

Virginia Indians utilized a far-flung trading network. For some upper Chesapeake
tribes, the network extended as far north as the Great Lakes. It was employed not
only for trade but to pass information—the so-called moccasin telegraph—and it
extended far to the south as well. When a Spanish naval captain sailing north from
Florida stopped at a town in present-day South Carolina, hoping to learn
Jamestown's location in order to attack it, the residents gave him precise
directions, even though the English settlement was hundreds of miles away and they
likely had never been there themselves.

Politics

Tsenacomoco was ruled by the mamanatowick,
or paramount chief. When the English arrived in 1607, that position was held by
Powhatan (Wahunsonacock), who was probably born around 1550 in the town called
Powhatan. After inheriting Tsenacomoco's core six tribes, he either conquered or
persuaded the rest to pay him tribute. Captain John Smith, in The Generall Historie of
Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624), described Powhatan as
an imposing figure: "He is of personage a tall well proportioned man, with a sower
looke, his head somwhat gray, his beard so thinne, that it seemeth none at all,
his age neare sixty; of a very able and hardy body to endure any labour."

Despite his fearsome qualities, Powhatan's power was not absolute. Each chiefdom
had its own weroance, or chief, and these chiefs sat on a
council, or cockarouse, that advised the paramount chief.
(Weroances also had their own councils.) In some matters the mamanatowick deferred
to the council; in others he acted independently of it. The chiefs and paramount
chiefs both were also advised by priests, or kwiocosuk. Weroances may have been
subordinate to their priests, while the paramount chief most likely was not.
Powhatan, especially, took the lead in matters of diplomacy with outsiders, while
one of his successors, his brother or kinsman Opechancanough, appeared to be more
of a war leader.

Although Powhatan possessed ample powers of punishment and did not hesitate to use them, he also bore
responsibility for the welfare of the people, who ascribed power to him based on
circumstances. In good times, they paid him large quantities of tribute, mostly
foodstuffs such as corn and beans, which were placed in storehouses from which
they could be drawn for feasts, for trade, for sacred rituals, and for feeding
people in times of need. When food was abundant, or when the Powhatans prevailed
over their adversaries, the people considered his leadership to be unquestionably
legitimate. In a time of extensive famine or defeat, however, their trust in him
and, therefore, his power declined.

In 1607, Powhatan was at the height of his power. And then the English sailed into
the heart of Tsenacomoco.

The English Arrive

On April 26, 1607, the shipsSusan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery sailed into the Chesapeake Bay with 144 English
men and
boys, including crews. A landing party came ashore to reconnoiter at a
place they gratefully named Point
Comfort. At dusk, Indians attacked and wounded two
Englishmen and then retreated under musket fire in the first, inauspicious contact
between the English and the people of Tsenacomoco.

Tsenacomoco was then in the second year of a drought that would last until 1612.
Sooner or later, all plants and creatures in the food chain would be affected: the
gardens' yields dropped while the forests' oaks produced fewer acorns for the
deer, which would thus decline in numbers and reduce the Indians' principal source
of protein. Because other protein-rich species, such as waterfowl and anadromous
fish—or fish such as shad that ascend rivers for breeding—were plentiful only at
certain times of the year, the lean seasons soon outnumbered the fat. The English,
who seemed to the Indians utterly incapable of taking care of themselves, stressed
the carrying capacity of the land to the tipping point with their ceaseless
demands for food.

The Powhatans found the English different in customs, incompetent, and rude. While
the natives washed themselves in
the rivers daily, the English regarded bathing as unhealthy. They also were
ignorant of protocol in Tsenacomoco, sailing past towns without visiting their
chiefs, marching around tribal territories fully armed as though intending war,
planting crosses in places that did not belong to them, and squatting on tribal
land (as they did at Jamestown) without asking permission beforehand—or ever.

Scholars have long wondered why Powhatan did
not wipe them out. He could have done so easily, especially in the earlier years
when the English were quickly dying from sickness and starvation. (In June 1607, 104 men and
boys lived at Jamestown; by the end of the winter, all but 38 were dead.) For at
least the first decade, the Indians not only vastly outnumbered the English but
also had the advantage in weaponry and woodland-warfare experience. The strangers'
initially terrifying muskets, Powhatan's men quickly learned, were more to be
feared for their noise than for their effectiveness in killing: slow to load,
requiring a lighted "match" or wick that might burn out or be put out by rain, and
not very accurate. The Powhatan warriors' method of guerrilla fighting, as well as
their accuracy with bows and arrows and their skillful wielding of war clubs and
tomahawks in close combat, made them the superior fighting force.

The answer probably is that Powhatan thought he might find the newcomers useful as
a subject "tribe," perhaps for tribute items such as iron hatchets, or to
intimidate with their noisy muskets other tribes within Tsenacomoco or his enemies
outside, such as the Monacans. When diplomacy and argument failed, Powhatan and
his successors sought to punish the English by killing some of them, to keep them
in line rather than to obliterate them. By the time Powhatan fully understood
English intransigence, it was too late and they were too strong. Powhatan had
pondered the question of whether the English were more of a potential asset to his
paramount chiefdom than a threat, and he arrived at the wrong conclusion.

War

The Englishmen were in Tsenacomoco on behalf of a private stock company, the Virginia Company of London.
The company wished to establish a foothold in the Chesapeake Bay region and
exploit the resources there for the benefit of its stockholders. Over the next few
years, the settlers endeavored to carry out the company's program despite disease,
hunger, death, and Powhatan's efforts to control them.

The Englishmen first explored up the James
River and wished to go farther, into Monacan territory. Powhatan forbade it,
probably concerned that the newcomers might forge an alliance with his enemies.
They planted themselves on a low, mosquito-ridden neck of land, drank seasonally
brackish water that poisoned them, bickered with each other, and died. During the
winter, Opechancanough captured Captain John Smith and brought him to Powhatan,
who believed Smith to be the strangers' leader (he was not, at that point).
Powhatan put Smith through what probably was an "adoption" ceremony—Smith later
credited Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas with saving his life—to make him a subject
weroance. In the summer of 1608, in part to escape the chaos at Jamestown, Smith
led two expeditions by boat up the Chesapeake Bay without Powhatan's permission.
He explored for precious metals and the Northwest Passage to the Orient, forged
trading agreements with various tribes, and drafted a map of the bay that
influenced English settlement for the rest of the century. He also angered
Powhatan for not behaving subserviently, and Powhatan soon decided to eliminate
Smith and attack the English to force them to leave Tsenacomoco.

In 1609, Powhatan left his capital, Werowocomoco, on the York River and moved west to Orapax on the
Chickahominy River. That autumn, Smith departed for England, never to return.
During the next few years, even as the two groups fought the First Anglo-Powhatan
War, the English spread beyond Jamestown and established new settlements,
especially up the James River. In 1613, Samuel Argall kidnapped Pocahontas and took her to
Jamestown as a hostage. She converted to Christianity in April 1614 and married
John Rolfe as Powhatan agreed to suspend hostilities.

After Powhatan died in April 1618, his brother or kinsman Opitchapam became paramount chief. He was not well,
however, and eventually Opechancanough succeeded him. Each new paramount chief
inherited a weakening Tsenacomoco, because the English had made their own
alliances inside and outside the polity and disrupted long-established networks of
trade and politics. The ties that bound
the tribes to the paramount chief's authority always had been stronger toward
Tsenacomoco's interior and weaker on its edges. With the English expanding their
settlements, constructing farms and forts on tribal lands, and moving about
Tsenacomoco at will, the threat of dissolution was imminent. On March 22, 1622,
Opechancanough led an attack on most of the scattered English settlements, killing
many of their inhabitants and inaugurating the Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622–1632).
His goal likely was to cause them to reduce the size of the colony. With the
colonists arriving in ever-increasing, land-hungry, and better-armed numbers,
however, Opechancanough's cause was hopeless.

The End of the Paramount Chiefdom

Over the next two decades, the English proved themselves as brutal as they were
tenacious. Finally, on April 18, 1644, Opechancanough launched a last, desperate
assault on their settlements. It failed, the colonists retaliated, and many of the
native residents fled Tsenacomoco. Two years later, the colonists captured and
killed Opechancanough. In October 1646, a new paramount chief named Necotowance concluded a peace
treaty that ended the Third Anglo-Powhatan War (1644–1646) and made all of the tribes subject
to the English king. The treaty set aside land for the tribes, but the settlers
generally ignored that provision. Soon, the surviving inhabitants of Tsenacomoco
either adapted to the new order or moved away. The paramount chiefdom ceased to
exist.

As of 2012, two tribal reservations existed and are located in King William County: the
Mattaponi Indian
Reservation on the banks of the Mattaponi River and the Pamunkey Indian
Reservation on the Pamunkey River. These few hundred acres comprise the
remnants of Tsenacomoco. Other Powhatan descendant communities recognized by the
Commonwealth of Virginia today include the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy,
Nansemond, Patawomeck, Rappahannock, and Upper Mattaponi.

Time Line

April 26, 1607
- Jamestown colonists first drop anchor in the Chesapeake Bay, and after a brief skirmish with local Indians, begin to explore the James River.

June 25, 1607
- By this date, Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, sends an ambassador to Edward Maria Wingfield, president of the Jamestown colony, promising peaceful relations and inviting the Englishmen to plant gardens.

September 1607
- By this month, the Jamestown colonists, who landed in April, have exhausted their stores of food and survive only on gifts of food from Powhatan's subchiefs, including Opechancanough.

December 1607
- Late in the month, John Smith is brought before Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco. He later tells of his life being saved by Pocahontas; in fact, Powhatan likely puts Smith through a mock execution in order to adopt him as a weroance, or chief.

February 1608
- Christopher Newport and John Smith visit Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, at his capital, Werowocomoco. Powhatan feeds them and their party lavishly, and Newport presents the chief with a suit of clothing, a hat, and a greyhound. The English continue upriver to visit Opechancanough at the latter's request.

September 1608
- Christopher Newport returns from England with a plan to improve relations with Virginia Indians by bestowing on Powhatan various gifts and formally presenting him with a decorated crown. The subsequent crowning is made awkward by Powhatan's refusal to kneel, and relations sour.

January 1609
- John Smith meets with Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, at his capital, Werowocomoco. Against Indian custom, Smith refuses to disarm in Powhatan's presence, and the chief attempts, but fails, to have Smith killed.

Summer 1609
- John Smith unsuccessfully attempts to purchase from Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, the fortified town of Powhatan in order to settle English colonists there.

October 1609
- John Smith leaves Virginia. The Jamestown colony's new leadership is less competent, and the Starving Time follows that winter.

November 1609
- Powhatan Indians lay siege to Jamestown, denying colonists access to outside food sources. The Starving Time begins, and by spring 160 colonists, or about 75 percent of Jamestown's population, will be dead from hunger and disease. This action begins the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614).

April 1613
- Powhatan's favorite daughter, Pocahontas, is captured and held hostage by the English, bringing a truce in the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The fight goes out of Powhatan, and during his apathy over the next year, his daughter is converted by the English.

April 1618
- The death of Powhatan, paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, is reported to the English colonists.

1618–1621
- While the elderly Opitchapam serves as paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, Opechancanough appears to build his own power base without unduly alarming the English.

March 22, 1622
- Indians under Opechancanough unleash a series of attacks that start the Second Anglo-Powhatan War. The assault was originally planned for the fall of 1621, to coincide with the redisposition of Powhatan's bones, suggesting that the attack was to be part of the final mortuary celebration for the former chief.

1630
- By this year, Opechancanough succeeds Opitchapam as paramount chief of Tsenacomoco.

April 18, 1644
- Opechancanough and a force of Powhatan Indians launch a second great assault against the English colonists, initiating the Third Anglo-Powhatan War. As many as 400 colonists are killed, but rather than press the attack, the Indians retire.

1646
- The English capture Opechancanough on the Pamunkey River. His successor, Necotowance, surrenders to the colonists, and Opechancanough is shot and killed while in English custody at Jamestown.

Rice, James D. "Escape from Tsenacommacah: Chesapeake Algonquians and the
Powhatan Menace." The Atlantic World and Virginia,
1550–1624. Peter C. Mancall, ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2007.

Contributed by John Salmon, historian for Virginia Civil War Trails, and author of The Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide. He also helped author the National Park Service's Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail Feasibility Study and Environmental Assessment (2006).